This man is frank and earnest with women. In Fresno, he’s Frank and in Chicago he’s Ernest.

What I like about the jokes, to me it’s a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won’t be funny.

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you’ll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

‚Discworld‘ is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

Stand-up is my baby.

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t.

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don’t ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It’s like, ‚Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.‘

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.

The other day I… uh, no, that wasn’t me.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

Obama’s not Jesus. He can’t walk on water.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in the bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.

I am what I am. A fighter.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time, when you get out of bed, it’s feet first!

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.